Chapter 66: Lukiyan

“What about you, handsome? Don’t you want a drink? Or something else?” asks the topless waitress standing before me, wearing a barely-there electric pink thong.

When I hesitate with my answer, her smile turns up a notch and she tilts her head to the side, allowing her long platinum waves to fall over her shoulder.

“No, I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” She steps closer, and her puckered nipples brush my suit jacket.

“I’m very sure.”

I’m used to this. It’s part of my world, and the woman before me is exactly my type.

I’m working, she knows I am, but all the men here—the guards included—have been offered a woman of their choosing for the night.

This woman clocked on me the moment I started my shift.

I’m telling myself I’m turning her down because I’m focusing on my goal, not because the only woman I want to be inside of is the one who’s off-limits to me.

At least if I were to accept the latter, I could take some credit, unlike Persephone’s bastard fiancé, who I saw going off to one of the rooms with a topless woman on each arm.

Because we all work together, I might have been able to play the naïve idiot and assume they were talking business, if I didn’t see him sucking their tits.

“What about when you finish? I can wait for you. I’m sure I can show you a really good time.” Seduction fills her eyes, and she runs her hands over her breasts, squeezing them so her nipples look harder.

I don’t disbelieve a word she says, but my answer is still going to be no.

“Sorry, sweetheart, not tonight.”

Although she looks disappointed, she still smiles. “Well, you know where to find me.”

Sauntering away, she walks with a sway to her shapely hips, showing off her ass. I stare after her knowing I must have gone fucking crazy.

But I accept it.

I switch my gaze away from her when she returns to the bar and scan the room. This is one of the many function rooms at the Grand Vittorio.

The scene before me looks like a cross between a brothel and a boardroom meeting. There are topless waitresses all around and men in suits carrying flutes of champagne.

Seated around a large mahogany table in the center of the room are ten of the wealthiest men in the world playing a high-stakes poker game.

Emilio is sitting at the head with his personal waitress next to him filling his glass the instant it empties. She is completely naked and was sitting on his lap when I first arrived.

This is the other side of Emilio, the wealthy I-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want side who owns people. It’s not the father who asked me to protect his daughter if trouble came.

That girl on his lap has to be younger than his daughter. She couldn’t be more than eighteen. Like Melissa was.

I wonder if Persephone knows what kind of man her father is.

A man of many faces who knows some of the most twisted fuckers on the planet. All those men at the table with him dabble in the sex trade and have prostitution rings in every corner of the globe.

This side of Emilio is the part I want to kill.

It’s the side that would have enticed my sister into a world darker than the one she knew.

It’s amazing; she grew up in the Bratva and was raised by a man who trained assassins, and not once did she ever have to worry for her life.

We took care of her.

I took care of her and promised I always would.

That’s why I die just a little more every day when I wonder why she didn’t come to me when she was in trouble.

She turned to drugs after the accident which killed our adopted parents. She blamed herself for their deaths because they were on the way to pick her up from the airport after a school trip.

It didn’t matter what anyone told her; she still blamed herself.

I never knew this would happen. That it would get this far, where she’s dead, and I’m here in the dragon’s lair seeking blood.

I have answers to some of my questions, but I still don’t know how it was Melissa came to be working for Emilio.

How the fuck did she even meet him, and when?

Seeing him with his waitress makes me wonder if she was just a worker, or if he ever slept with her.

Both possibilities enrage me.

I wish she’d never met him. But more than that, I wish Melissa had never met Judas.

He’d already killed her when he stabbed her in her head and her heart.

He left the knife in her stomach for a reason, though. That blow wasn’t meant for her but for her baby.

She was three months pregnant and, like everything else, I didn’t know.

That bastard killed her and his child in one of the worst ways possible. There is no forgiveness for that.

I tear my gaze away from the table and look around to change the view. If I’m not careful, the usual boredom will set in, and I can’t allow that any more than I can allow my thoughts to drift back to Persephone.

My attention is drawn to the balcony when a man approaches the patent rail.

There’s nothing special about him, but he looks shifty. He keeps my attention when he starts walking a little faster.

I keep my eyes on him, and it’s not until he reaches into his pocket and I catch sight of his silver gun that I snap into action.

I move away from the corner when he aims at Emilio, pull out my gun, and shoot him before he can cock the hammer.

The sound of my gunfire and the man falling over the rail has the women screaming and the men scrambling, looking around to figure out what’s going on.

I barely get the chance to do so before another gun man emerges, coming from the same place the previous one did. And he’s aiming for Emilio again.

This time, I have to knock Emilio to the floor to save him. The bullet whizzes past us and lodges in the chair.

On seeing that, the shooter runs back the way he came, but more men like him burst through the door and start shooting up the place.

As the other guards shoot back, Frankie rushes to our side.

“Emilio, you okay?” he shouts.

“I’m fine,” Emilio replies.

I look him over and see that, with the exception of his eye patch falling off, the motherfucker is fine. How twisted it is that I, the man who wants to kill him, just saved his life.

What’s more interesting is that I’m not the only motherfucker who wants him dead.

There seems to be a line of us waiting for a turn. Except I can’t allow those behind to skip ahead because Emilio is my only link to Judas.

“You guys stay here,” I say to them both.

Before either can answer, I leave them. The shooter who ran away would have only done so for a reason if the other man came in and opened fire.

He is who I’m going after.

Taking cover behind the pillars, I manage to reach the main door. When a fucker wearing a mask rushes me, I grab my knife from my back pocket and slice his throat. He’s dead before he can lift a finger to attack me.

I throw the knife into the heart of another guy who comes from the left, then I rush through the door.

I follow the corridor around to the only entrance I know they could have used and kill more men as they come toward me.

I take the stairs down to the next floor, and that’s when I see the door to the vault is open. The place where Emilio keeps all his secrets.

It’s supposed to be sealed off, and only those above a certain paygrade are permitted access, yet the fucking door is wide open.

The guards who are always at the door lie dead on the floor, and there are more inside, lining the path.

I follow the path and find the guy who tried to kill Emilio with two other men who are coming out of one of the storage rooms.

When they see me, both open fire.

Thinking on my feet, I take down the two with a bullet to the head when I pull my other gun, but I shoot the guy who tried to kill Emilio in the chest.

He falls to the ground like his dead friends and tries to crawl away.

In the Bratva, when you’re trained to kill, you never miss a target and you never spare a life unless you want to keep them alive for a reason.

I walk up to him just as he’s about to reach for a gun on the ground nearby, kick him so he flips onto his back, and step on his wound.

He screams in agonizing pain, and louder when I press the tip of my shoe into his skin.

“Who the fuck sent you?” I demand, aiming my gun at his head.

“Fuck you, dog.”

I answer that remark by shooting him in his left arm. He shouts again.

“One more time. Who sent you?”

“As if I’m going to tell you.”

“Okay, I’ll play. I’ll torture the answer out of you.”

“No, you won’t.” He pops something in his mouth, and it’s too late when I realize what it is.

It’s a poisonous tablet, and there’s only one group of people I know who do that.

I crouch down, and from experience, I roll up the sleeve of his shirt on his left arm and find exactly what I’m looking for. It’s a tattoo of a dagger with a snake curling around the handle.

This man was not just some random whitman you hire for a kill. Of course, he wouldn’t be if he hoped to kill Emilio Vittorio.

He’s from a group called The Order.

Mostly, they’re terrorists, and there are several factions of them who work for all sorts of people nobody wants to fuck with.

They’re also the best people you hire for jobs like this—the assassination of a mafia boss.